


Hot Chocolate

by epistemology



Series: The Official Gotham City Bat Cafe [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Don't Post To Another Site, Gen, POV Outsider, i.e. utter terror, kind of a character study but also not quite, written so I could explore the opposite reaction to meeting a vigilante
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23778562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistemology/pseuds/epistemology
Summary: And just like that, working the night shift at the official Bat approved coffeeshop went from enviable to terrifying.Amanda meets Nightwing.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Series: The Official Gotham City Bat Cafe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688404
Comments: 19
Kudos: 205





	Hot Chocolate

Amanda sat on the top shelf in the back room and tried to figure out how to get down.

She’d climbed up there to retrieve a box from the top but unfortunately hadn’t thought through how she was supposed to climb back to the floor with it in her hands, and now she was stuck.

"Luke! Can you help me out with something?” She called. Hopefully he wasn’t busy.

“Amanda, you need to get out here,” she heard him hiss before he rounded the corner and froze, smile slowly stretching onto his face. “What did you do?” He was clearly entertained by her predicament.

“I needed something from the top shelf!”

“We have a ladder you know.”

“I know.” She didn’t have to defend herself.

Luke didn’t press, just chuckled and reached out to accept the box when Amanda lowered it as much as she could.

“Now get down from there. Nightwing and Robin just walked in,” he said and then turned and strode out.

Amanda clambered down so fast she made the whole shelf wobble a little as she jumped from the bottom ledge.

When she got to the counter, there was already an argument going on.

“I do not want hot chocolate, Nightwing!”

“Well too bad! You’re not getting anything with caffeine in it, Batman’s orders.”

Tiny Robin scowled, and Amanda suppressed a laugh at how adorable he was, because the katana he was holding told her he definitely wouldn’t appreciate it.

She watched them as Luke made their drinks, trying to be subtle even though their white lenses made it impossible to know if they were gazing back at her. At the conclusion of their argument they had both fallen silent, and the atmosphere in the cafe had become decidedly more eerie. Amanda waited for the cliché flicker of the lights, but it never came.

Robin was small, she decided, but that did not mean she was going to underestimate him. Besides the very obvious sword he wielded, he must have had incredible talent in order to work alongside the Batman, even if he was much too young to be risking his life like that each night. His small stature and haughty attitude made for a bizarre combination that left her thinking he might be anywhere between eight and sixteen.

“It’s nice to meet you, Amanda. Red Robin told me you’re new.” Nightwing’s relaxed comment brought her back to the moment. She pointedly ignored the implication that she was a subject of gossip among the Bats.

“Yeah, I, uh, started working nights a couple months ago.”

A frown crossed his face before it was replaced by something different. “Oh, I guess that’s not exactly new anymore, is it?”

“Not really.”

"You getting enough sleep? Double R said you're a student, so you must have classes during the day," he said, concern lacing his voice. It seemed almost out of place, but Amanda brushed it off. He probably comforted victims all the time; concern should be a part of his natural disposition. So why did everything about him seem so contrary?

"Yeah," she finally managed, "I don't have class until noon, so I'm able to sleep in, plus I can usually catch a short nap before my shift if I don't have too much homework."

"That's good."

Silence fell over them again, and Amanda busied herself with watching her guests, not caring anymore if they noticed. Robin certainly did and was scowling at her from underneath his hood.

Nightwing was harder to read. If Red Robin had come in all those nights ago exhausted and drained, Nightwing was simultaneously tired and full of boundless energy, happy and sad and angry all at once. His smile was a little too bright, and the white lenses of his mask couldn’t hide that it didn’t quite reach his eyes. She thought she could easily be intimidated by him.

Something about him seemed _off_ , as if he wasn’t entirely human. 

Amanda had been scared before. She lived in Gotham. She’d been robbed at gunpoint, been trapped in a building the Joker had wired to explode, had faced the effects of Scarecrow’s fear toxin. And those things had been terrifying. But the fear was familiar; it was what she would expect in the situation. The energy that Nightwing so carelessly emitted brought a kind of fear that Amanda was entirely unfamiliar with. 

She prayed that she’d never have a weapon pointed at her only to see Nightwing at the other end.

But then he smiled, a real smile, and the spell was broken. Luke handed the vigilantes two steaming cups of hot chocolate, to-go cups Amanda realized belatedly, and they walked out the door upon taking them. She almost missed Nightwing’s cheerful “Goodnight!” but was too wrapped up in visions of dangerous acrobatics and daring rescues to care. The entire interaction had lasted less than five minutes, yet Amanda felt overwhelmed and overstimulated.

Luke patted her on the shoulder, and only then did she realize how tense she was. “Yeah, I probably shoulda warned you about how intense Nightwing is. Sorry ‘bout that.”

He didn’t sound sorry, so Amanda didn’t answer. She was still struggling to fuse the public image of Nightwing to the one she’d just spoken to. She’d always seen him characterized as the fun vigilante, the hot vigilante, the vigilante who flipped and flew and made everyone fall in love. This man, if he even was a man and not some kind of ghost of fae (she wasn’t so ignorant as to not know that magic existed), seemed so different from what she’d always believed him to be. She’d gotten the pleasure of meeting Nightwing himself, and she had no way of knowing whether he did or did not live up to her expectations.

She wondered if pleasure was even the right word. The fact that she had lived through it felt like a pleasure, but Robin had been the one with his weapon drawn. Robin was the one who had presented himself as a threat, even if only a little.

No, that wasn’t right. Amanda had no doubt that, whether Robin had a sword or not, Nightwing was infinitely more deadly, more lethal.

And just like that, working the night shift at the official Bat approved coffeeshop went from enviable to terrifying.

She wanted to see him again.

**Author's Note:**

> My [tumblr](https://epistemologys.tumblr.com/)


End file.
